He went to sleep with fierce half-dreams of blood and killing, mentally devastating Firsters and Savers and all others who insisted on turning his planet into a bloody arena, fierce man dreaming of wrecking havoc on other fierce men.
As light grew on the eastern horizon the servos of the Kennedy compensated for temperature changes in the hull. The sun, shrunken by distance, was still a powerful force as it rose above the harsh and eroded mountains.
Chapter Eleven
“I am shamelessly happy,” Doris said.
The jumper sat atop the fifteen-mile height of the ancient crater, Olympus Mons.
“I will not feel guilty for being happy,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
The news from Earth was bad. In the west, terrorists were gaining steadily. The valuable space facility at DOSEWEX was besieged and was being sustained by airlift. There was talk of evacuating DOSEWEX, to concentrate the defense in the east. Should DOSEWEX be abandoned, everything of value would have to be destroyed. The waste would be horrifying. Moreover, with DOSEWEX gone, one lucky hit on the Houston center would leave DOSE without communications with its ships in space. J.J. sent down word to hold DOSEWEX at all costs.
DOSE was, of course, in command of the moon. A command post had been set up there. To compensate for the possible loss of DOSEWEX, powerful communications equipment had been lifted from the Canaveral base, and it was now possible for Kennedy to communicate directly with the command post.
Dom was surprised to find that J.J. was considered by those on the moon to be quite powerful and very valuable. J.J. received regular reports on the situation.
Although the situation was not good, it was encouraging that the vast masses of the people still seemed to be content to sit back and watch without taking sides. Both sides were leaning over backward to treat the populace with the utmost consideration. Refugees from battle zones were living in more luxury than most of the citizens who had not been driven from their homes. Both forces shared food and supplies and medical treatment with their refugees. The alliance between the remnants of government and the armed services had seized vast stores of materials and food and were less strained than the rebels.
At times the fighting was deadly and fierce, but the real battle was being fought in the minds of the uncommitted masses. The propaganda flow from both sides promised milk and honey in the future.
Dom knew exactly what Doris meant about feeling guilty. While the world faced the crisis, he found the days of waiting on Mars to be the happiest of his life. While they were not pulling watch they were free to explore. The trip to the top of the planet’s highest mountain was only one of several excursions which they enjoyed while the water was being offloaded. Since a jumper is self-powered by the heat of the sun, it was not at all wasteful to travel. Dom was an old Mars hand, knew the best times to view the huge rift system to get a maximum show of light and shadow, knew the best vantage point atop Olympus Mons, and enjoyed it anew because of the delight which Doris showed.
There was time, during the waiting period, to talk with the crew of the Callisto Explorer, who had seen the alien ship dive into Jupiter. Those men had seen the ship, had heard the weak signals which were still being transmitted from just inside the gaseous atmosphere. On watch, Dom could speak directly to the picket ship on duty out near the gas giant. While keeping radio watch on the signals, the ship was taking atmosphere samples from the larger moons of Jupiter’s thirteen-satellite system. Dom often talked with the skipper.
The signal was too weak to be picked up by Kennedy’s receivers, but the picket ship could relay it. Dom made dozens of recordings for study. The alien was broadcasting on one of the natural frequencies, 1420 megahertz. The signal was simple and brief, so brief it still defied attempts at decoding. Still, he felt closer to the goal to be able to listen to the relay from the picket ship.
In talking with crew who had done picket duty, Doris was impressed by the words of one young spacer.
“When you’re in close,” he said, “she swallows up all of space and looms over your head so that you wake up in a cold sweat thinking that she’s come unstuck and is falling down on top of you.”
Every man who had been near Jupiter had been awed by her.
One of the things Dom liked best about Mars was the feeling of togetherness which permeated the population. Everyone felt the friendliness—temporary visitors, spacers, permanent settlers, scientists. The harshness of the surface, the millions of miles which separated them from home, the odd, small look of the sun, covering only two-thirds of the area of sky which an Earth-viewed sun covered, all seemed to draw people closer together. In spite of the armed guard which surrounded the Kennedy at all times, it was difficult to believe that the Earthside war could affect Mars. Dom expressed the belief that if a Firster fanatic could penetrate the service and get all the way to Mars he would be impressed that feel the sense of accomplishment shared by all spacers, would forget his beliefs and become just a spacer. That he was wrong was evidenced by an attempt to attach a limpet mine to the Kennedy’s number four port thruster by an enlisted spacer with twelve years’ service. Caught in the act, the man took two space marines with him into the small but growing Mars Station Cemetery.
The incident seemed to kill the glow of contentment and happiness which Dom had felt since Doris said yes that night in the main control room. To think that the lunacy of Earth could contaminate Mars depressed him. He was glad when the hold was closed and pressurized and the Kennedy once again stood ready.
The longest leg of the journey lay ahead of them. Roughly, they had traveled one half of an astronomical unit to reach Mars, about one half the distance between Earth and the sun, or about forty-seven million miles. The distance between Mars and Jupiter was roughly three and three-quarters astronomical units, in the neighborhood of three hundred and sixty million miles. When dealing with such figures the mind refused to accept the vastness of space and tended to think of the journey in terms of months. Distance becomes relative when expressed in terms of time. Dom liked to remember that it had taken the pioneers almost as long to travel from the midwest to the Pacific coast by wagon train as it now took a ship to move from the orbit of Mars to the orbit of Jupiter. Kennedy, with her unlimited power for acceleration, was at her best over long distances. She could pick up speed faster, cruise faster, and slow faster than conventional ships.
After a thorough inspection of the ship, although no Mars personnel had boarded her, they settled into the comfortable routine which had been established during the last weeks of the run to Mars. Jensen’s powerplant pushed and then rested. Acceleration continued well past the midway point. A picket ship was still on duty near Jupiter, and the watch on both ships, glad for company in the vastness of space, talked back and forth, using relatively low power as the distance between them grew steadily less, so that their often informal conversations could not be monitored back on Earth.